R.I.P. MGM musical star Jane Powell
The star of Royal Wedding and Seven Brides For Seven Brothers was 92
Film News Jane Powell
The New York Times reports that Jane Powell, star of a multitude of MGM musicals during the golden age of Hollywood, has died at her home in Wilton, Connecticut. She was 92.
Born in Oregon, Powell took many singing and dancing lessons as a child. She was chosen as the Oregon Victory Girl when she was 12, and had two local radio shows of her own as a very young performer. Powell moved to Hollywood as a teenager, where she quickly landed a contract at Metro Goldwin Mayer by auditioning for Louis B. Mayer himself. The petite star (only 5’1”) soon made a splash in vehicles like Three Daring Daughters, Luxury Liner, and Two Weeks With Love, and as the titular character in A Date With Judy, alongside pal Elizabeth Taylor. (She was a bridesmaid at Taylor’s first wedding to hotel heir Conrad Hilton.)
Powell cemented her status in MGM history starring opposite Fred Astaire in Royal Wedding (1951), playing his sister in a part that resembled the real-life Adele Astaire (replacing a struggling Judy Garland, who was replacing a pregnant June Allyson). After holding her own opposite one of the greats, she was cast as the female lead in the 1954 classic Seven Brides For Seven Brothers, opposite Howard Keel.
Powell then broke out of musical mode in 1958’s noir-ish The Female Animal, best-known as Hedy Lamarr’s last film; she played Lamarr’s daughter as both women competed for the same man. But it was also one of Powell’s final films as well. Somewhat fed-up with the studio system, as well as playing ingénue roles when she herself was married with children, Powell eventually turned to the stage, debuting on Broadway in Irene, and reuniting with Keel in a stage version of Seven Brides, as well as South Pacific. She also worked steadily on television over decades in a number of guest spots, in series as disparate as What’s My Line?, The Love Boat, and Murder, She Wrote. She played the family grandmother on Growing Pains and filled in for Eileen Fulton a few times as Lisa Grimaldi on the long-running soap opera As The World Turns. Her final TV appearance was in an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit in 2002.
She was married five times, but her fifth and longest marriage was to child star Dick (Dickie) Moore, from 1988 to his death in 2015. She published her autobiography The Girl Next Door… And How She Grew in 1988 as well, where she complained about Hollywood and the career her parents seemed more enthusiastic about than she was: “The truth is I never really felt as if I belonged in Hollywood, the Hollywood that took Suzanne Burce from Portland, Oregon, and turned her into Jane Powell.” The introduction to her book alludes to the childhood she missed out on by starting her career so early: “Life is a ladder we all ascend / in a different way. Sometimes we run / up too fast and miss a few rungs.”
Dick Moore died in 2015, and The New York Times reports that Powell died in the Connecticut home that the couple had shared. She is survived by a son, two daughters, and two granddaughters.
13 Comments
RIP. A long life, though. Seven Brides is my jam.
I get why people think Seven Brides for Seven Brothers is problematic. Hell, it is problematic but, damn, I love that movie.
“When You’re in Love” is Jane Powell’s centerpiece but “Wonderful, Wonderful Day” is really the highlight for me. Just Jane Powell powering through joy so marvelously that you stop noticing Hollywood’s worst painted backdrop behind her.
RIP
So problematic. Probably couldn’t even be rewritten enough to make it today.But, she’s the fantastic as the voice of reason trying to convince the brothers that isn’t right. And the main set piece with the brothers competing is fantastic.
Put me down for loving her in Royal Wedding, playing a lightly-fictionalized version of Fred Astaire’s sister Adele, right down to marrying a nobleman (played here by That Most Californian of Englishman, Peter Lawford).
Kind of wish they’d switched her and Churchill’s daughter around, because she and Astaire had the more believable chemistry.
RIP to a talented, and underappreciated, actress, dancer and singer.
Royal Wedding also features the song with the greatest title ever
– ‘How Could You Believe Me When I Said I Love You When You Know I’ve
Been a Liar All My Life’.
I second that she would have had more chemistry with Astaire in Royal Wedding, but we would’ve missed out on them doing “How Could You Believe Me When I Said I Loved You When You Know I’ve Been A Liar All My Life”. One of my favorite muscial moments.
Royal Wedding is jam-packed with incredible song numbers, and Powell is a delight in it.
She’s lots of fun in Delightfully Dangerous as a teen who believes her older sister and guardian is a Broadway star, only to be shocked to find out she’s a burlesque queen.
she was a lovely singer
I like Royal Wedding. One of my dad’s favorite films. She was wonderful.
Jane Powell was born in the wrong era for her talents – by the time she started to become a star, peaches-and-cream musicals were on the way out, replaced by many attempts at thoughtful (if often ponderous and bloated) pieces treating the musical as an artform. Jane was not there to do some kind of 10 minute ballet of angst for Gene Kelly – she was there to entertain us. I’m glad she at least got Seven Brides, which she is fantastic is, along with the whole cast. And as the years passed she remained very likeable and endearing in her work, not taking the scolding route that many stars of her era did. I was just thinking about her recently, as so many have passed away lately. I guess they’re in good company now.
Russ Tamblyn is one step closer to that Seven Brides tontine.Sad news, I haven’t seen her in much but she was brilliant in what I have.
It’s kind of sad, that she sounds like she didn’t even really want to be in show business.